Author: Lauren White

Project Name: Taking A Stand: Student Social Justice Movements at Gettysburg College from 1980 to the Present

Project Owner : Lauren White

Project Summary

The goal for my project is to create a comprehensive and interactive timeline detailing student-led social justice movements at Gettysburg College from 1980 to the present. I will use Timeline JS software and a WordPress platform to detail at least ten major instances of student activism and how each event impacted the campus and how it tied in to local and national attitudes towards social justice.  I am primarily creating this for the Gettysburg College student body; however, I would be thrilled for my audience to include faculty, staff, and students from other institutions.

Deliverables

• The oral histories, Gettysburg College factbooks, photographs, SURGE articles and Gettysburgian and Gettysburg Times articles which can be found in the College Archives or from college administration
• Stories from alumni and current students about their experiences with activism at Gettysburg
• WordPress and Timeline JS
• Zotero

Timeline

• Week 3: Finalize WordPress theme, and contact all the alumni or current students I intend to work with
• Week 4: Understand Timeline JS and any other programs that are of interest to me
• Week 5: Finalize the bulk of my research attained from special collections, my secondary sources, and the college factbooks.
• Week 6: Finalize interviews with alumni and students willing to be a part of my project, and work out any copyright issues I may encounter.
• Week 7: Have all research in a digital format.
• Weeks 8 and 9: Fill in any blanks I may have left, edit website, and prepare for my project presentation.
• Week 10: Finalize and deliver project presentation

 

• End of Life/Future Plans
  • I plan to continue work on my project after the fellowship is completed and expand the time range to include earlier dates. Additionally, it is my desire that the timeline be continually updated as student activism continues to take place at Gettysburg.

Over the course of our first week, we read a number of texts and had multiple conversations which attempted to define digital humanities.  Part of the definition’s complexity is due to the fact that work in the digital humanities is simultaneously individual and collaborative. The digital humanities are inherently creative—they are exciting because an individual has the opportunity to transform traditional scholarship of their choosing into something new and unique through an array of digital tools. Consequently, there is a personal aspect to each project because it reflects the values and imagination of the individual. Yet, the digital humanities are bonded together by multiple networks which are necessary for the individual to succeed. The sharing of ideas and knowledge from people at all levels of experience is crucial to the success of a digital humanities project. Additionally, digital humanities projects are meant to be publicly shared and distributed to enhance people’s knowledge and build communities.   Each interaction between the individual and community results in a distinctive project, and the number and variety of projects seemingly hinders a single definition. However, I believe that the digital humanities all attempt to present scholarship from various fields in a creative, open, and engaging way through the use of digital tools and collaborative efforts.

I plan to apply my definition of digital humanities to my project this summer. It is important to me that my project represents my personal voice and imagination, while also highlighting and enlivening the work and experiences of others. My personal desire to involve myself in student led social justice movements inspired my project. It is my goal to transform traditional scholarship (found in the form of archival material and secondary sources) into a story that engages other college students and challenges them to think critically about their own position and potential with regard to the social movements happening on their campuses.  I know that this goal can only happen if I have other people’s help and input—this includes the other fellows in my cohort, who will be able to share their successes, failures, and experiences with me, just as I share mine with them, and the team of librarians and digital experts, who can offer guidance and help based on their experience. The other community I hope to reach out to is those people who were or are actively involved with social justice at Gettysburg. Humanities and scholarship are not limited to textbooks; rather, they can be found in the personal anecdotes people share and representations of their lives. As such, I aim to digitize people’s stories in a way that feels immersive and authentic to allow people to learn from each other in addition to hard facts. If my project succeeds, it will be an immersive digital storytelling that conveys my own passion for social justice, while actively featuring the voices of those who brought about social change at Gettysburg College and building off of the advice and input of the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship team.

-Lauren

Over the course of the 2015-2016 academic year, the Gettysburg College community was witness to various instances of student-led social activism. The campus activity and my own passion for social justice inspired me to frame my digital humanities project around the history of student-led social justice movements at Gettysburg College. I plan to use WordPress and Timeline JS to make an interactive timeline that examines past and present student-led activism at Gettysburg, and provides a space for future documentation. It is my hope that sharing this information on an interactive platform establishes the validity and power of student-led social justice movements, and inspires students (especially those at Gettysburg) to be involved in the various movements taking place on their own campuses.

-Lauren

Hello! My name is Lauren White, and I am a rising junior at Gettysburg College pursuing a double major in Environmental Studies and English.

I became interested in the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship because I saw it as an opportunity to present my ideas in an engaging, communal, and interactive way. The prospect of being able to give life to my thoughts in a digital format excited and inspired me. I look forward to learning how to use digital tools and advancing the research and analytical skills I have developed in my academic career to contribute to the field of Digital Scholarship.